Andrea Callard (USA)

Andrea Callard’s interdisciplinary practice moves through fine art, communication media, and education. She recently made three sound pieces: Protest, Transport, Celebrate, a new version of Tunings by R. Buckminster Fuller, and audiobus.org. PS1, The Museum of the Chinese in America, Creative Time and many others have published or presented her work. Her field recordings from downtown New York City in the 70’s. are with her papers in the Downtown Collection at the Fales Library, NYU.

As a child in Muncie, Indiana, my father woke us up by blasting classical music throughout the house. My grandfather and younger sister played the flute. At 7, I had a wonderful teacher, Virginia Schoeff and I painted every day in her class. She was a great community leader and organized community sings around Christian holidays. The best choirs in Indiana would sing for an audience of about 20,000 gathered in the town field house. At 10, I joined the school choir and every day we sang for about an hour before starting school. We appeared on the local TV station regularly.My parents thought I was shy so they sent me to Dr. Campbell, a professor at Ball State University for voice lessons. I continued to sing solo soprano for a church choir and Mrs. Pugsley’s choir in junior high school. Mrs. Pugsley and Mrs. Schoeff were sisters. When I went to boarding school at Kingswood School Cranbrook, I found the dynamics of choral music unattractive, turned away from choral music, and pursued visual art.

As an adult, I have tuned in and out and in again in spells of singing, recording sound, and making sound compositions for media. When my dog died, so did my singing dog walks. I also practice writing and various forms of digital and visual art. I make field recordings and edit them using principles of composition that are common to visual art: repetition, overlap, relative size, and so on. I use simple technical strategies that are accessible and from many places on the consumer_professional continuum. I like to set up a weekly rhythm of “chances,” that is, chances to play, listen, edit, and share. For fun, I recently began playing the electric bass guitar as a percussion instrument. I balance working alone and also collaborate with several friends as well as work with the New York Society for Acoustic Ecology. I am involved in both new and archival sound and am writing a business plan that involves constructing non-fiction documents.